Each short chapter-covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency-is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.īringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior. Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion.

You’re just as deluded as the rest of us-but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human. Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. In You Are Not So Smart (as in the blog of the same name that preceded it) McRaney focuses on the topic of self-delusion by linking scientific studies to real-world behaviors.

In each episode, we explore what weve learned so far about reasoning, biases, judgments, and decision-making. An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name. You Are Not So Smart is a show about psychology that celebrates science and self delusion.

You are not so smart by david mcraney